How to educate?

 A question that has been the inquiry of many a teacher, a parent and student alike for years.  Clearly yours truly has no professional background on the subject, but will attempt to dissect what I see in the following narrative.

In today's world there are distinct styles of education based on my personal experience going through one and vicariously through our kid studying at an American University.

The Asian, in my case Indian style of elementary and high school education followed by University level undergraduate and grad work all rests on the parameters of a one way traffic model.  Meaning the teacher or professor is in command of the board (black or green in our case written on with white chalk) all the time.  There is rarely an opportunity for dialog.

There is not enough opportunity given for the mind to explore what ifs, questioning the written word or even read outside the curriculum too much.  This is rooted in culture and circumstance.

Contrast it with the western model where collective thinking is encouraged and the network effect of learning through peers sometimes exceeds the teacher teaching content.  Helping the mind wander and absorbing through multiple stimuli is more productive than a textbook version of the facts.

The west has been blessed with more teacher to student ratios as well as other infrastructure like reliable power and now internet.  The Asian and particularly Indian sub-continent still faces chronic issues like power cuts and water cuts.  That is why some of the education styles are the way they are.  How it translates I think is that teachers are under the gun to get certain curriculum completed in certain time.  There is no luxury of expanding on subjects and doing case methods when the tomes that they are tasked to run through are ridiculously large.

Couple that with multiple cultural and infrastructural limitations and your work schedule is impacted.  Better to dump and teach by rote than let 100 students wander with their imaginations.

Outside of all this physical manifestation of inadequacies there is also a case to be made that culturally eastern civilization focuses on having seniority and so called degreed people think highly of themselves.  As such there is not much room for dissent.

It is evident in the way we address people in the east, always with a respectful Sir or Madam.  America on the other hand is first name basis from the lowly janitor to Dean of the School.

It definitely creates a more equal and verdant society of students when there are no artificial barriers to developing or testing one's intellect.

A recent interview of the famous inventory and businessman Elon Musk revealed that he has taken the case base method of American education to a new level.  He finds even the western way of education to be limiting in that it teaches about tools to do a job and provides a lot of discussion on those but it never asks the basic questions of why certain things are the way they are.

So he has taken his five boys and started a new school.  There are other kids now enrolling and is very different than a curriculum based, mandatory subject type format.

Granted when money is not an object and you have the sharpest minds as teachers you can achieve something unparalleled but his idea is that it too can scale.

He teaches four and five year olds how to take apart a car as an example and question everything from the ground up.  Make the mind inquisitive and destroy preconceived ideas.  As brains are developing in the formative years it is the perfect time to play with the clay like architecture and learn through experimentation and first principles.

Clearly we have not seen the end of this debate yet.  Best is perhaps yet to come.